Portrait of an Old-Fashioned Classroom
(a.k.a. Ode to Kenneth Koch)
Patches of corduroy in blues, browns
the day it was green when mine was
was a triumphant day
the pile of books made porcupine with flailing
stickies
(notes to self?)
preceded you through the door
one day it stuck
the visiting physics kid from MIT couldn’t un-stick
it
neither could your cell phone
but all it took was a turn in the uncommon direction
disaster averted
and we were back to the good things.
We imagine your unassuming command of the buildings
feet simultaneously caressing and spanking the
streets
(is that not a mixed metaphor?)
yes. But let’s move on—
Do you address the punctuated light patches
as they fade in and out
Pollocking about the brick facades
in violent atmospheric strokes
or do sour hot dogs
too early (too late) in a day
distract you into the way your youth seemed to
address you
the way you violently address youth now
in a series of interjections
strung together by
“even though I’ve lifted this stubborn dust cover
over and over
there are too many could-be’s falling into the hands
altruism drowned in high-falutin theories
only meant to propagate their own
post colonial species and such.”
When the lights come up
how we feel cheated
by the way the crowd ushers us down the stairs
out of the velvet chairs
to the snack stand and the souvenir shop
(T-shirts! Half off! Limited time only!) “Charlie,
be careful with that soda! Those are your church
pants!”
so they can show everyone
back home that the curtains lifted
for an hour and fifteen minutes and what the show
was about:
“Charlie spilled his soda.”
After the weekend chores die down
and the dollar-fifty fare is worth a hundred and two
blocks
and six flights of stairs
and an every other minute presence
of here is my past, present, future in a thought
that fragments all over the pages—
a word that’s worth a thousand pictures
and a random “I love you” to giggle us through
the Paris
diagrams on the board
that stay the seriousness
of the hand that draws us.
